The Bayeux Tapestry is coming home – this is a huge moment in our cultural history

Telegraph

5 days ago

Some works of art are so famous that they're seared in the collective imagination, as familiar to us as our parents' faces. One such piece is that 224ft-long embroidered strip of linen known as the Bayeux Tapestry, which, as almost every British schoolchild could tell you, memorialises the Battle of Hastings, as well as the events leading up to it, and the Norman Conquest of 1066.
For centuries, it has been a cornerstone of European culture – much parodied (including by The Simpsons) and still a source of inspiration for contemporary artists such as David Hockney, whose current retrospective in Paris includes a homage to it set, appropriately, within the grounds of his half-timbered Normandy property. Prior to today's announcement that, in a reciprocal deal with the French, it will be lent to Britain – in exchange for the British Museum 's Lewis chessmen and Anglo-Saxon treasures from Sutton Hoo – it was still generating headlines as recently as this spring, when a debate broke out among medieval historians regarding the number of penises depicted within it. The jury's still out on whether there are 93 (88 of them equine) or 94.
Although the wall hanging, which consists of nine conjoined panels, was almost certainly produced in England (probably, according to stylistic evidence, towards the end of the 11th century), it is housed, today, in Normandy's purpose-built Bayeux Museum. (There's also a full-size replica in Reading.) The prospect of its imminent display in Britain provides an opportunity to remove the encrustation of familiarity that, in a sense, obscures it.
For, while the tapestry has long been considered an important primary source for English history, and a sort of visual glossary documenting life in early medieval Europe (teeming with depictions of astonishingly diverse objects, including harrows and hunting horns, biers, barrels, wagons and spades), what sometimes gets forgotten is that it's also a superb example of secular Romanesque art. It was likely commissioned by the Norman nobleman, and King William the Conqueror's half-brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux (in the accounts of whose church, Bayeux Cathedral, it was first mentioned, during the 15th century).
Whoever designed the tapestry was an artist of considerable imaginative power, capable of summoning a remarkably consistent and lively extended narrative. The tumultuous, topsy-turvy battle scenes, in particular – with their chainmail-clad warriors and upended horses, and, of course, Harold, identified (like the work's other figures) by an inscription, possibly tugging at an arrow that may be protruding from his eye – are unforgettably dynamic.
The action, though, is rarely illegible, in part because the background isn't embroidered with coloured woollen yarns (technically, the Bayeux Tapestry, a few scenes of which are lost, is an embroidery), so that the graphic immediacy of the design within this broad central section is not diluted; text, mostly in square capitals, helps to clarify and drive the narrative, too. Everything is represented using a palette of only 10 shades of dye derived from plants including madder and woad. At one point, Halley's Comet makes a cameo.
The middle zone, where the cut-and-thrust of the story (itself, divided into discrete scenes) takes place, is mostly flanked, at top and bottom, by decorative borders or bands. Sometimes, these borders serve a simple ornamental purpose, or represent tales from, say, Aesop's fables. But they can also interact with, and even foreshadow, aspects of the principal story, in a manner that attests to the sophistication of the tapestry's maker and its audience.
This, as much as the surprising fact of its survival, imbues it with a miraculous aura. That something so fundamental to our national story is, as it were, coming home – possibly after more than nine centuries! – is a massive moment for this country.
Lucky old British Museum: back in 1972, it sparked Tutankhamun mania with an exhibition of 50 artefacts from the tomb of the young pharaoh (including his mummy's famous gold mask), which attracted almost 1.7 million visitors across nine months. Opening in autumn 2026, and scheduled to run until the following summer, its Bayeux Tapestry exhibition might just be a blockbuster of similar magnitude.